The Pint-Sized Bots Taking on Hawaii's Ironman Triathlon

Six-and-a-half-inch Evolta robots are trying to complete the Ironman course on Hawaii's big island. Although a robot racer could take any form, Evolta's creators designed three diminutive endurance machines to swim, run, and bike like humans—mortal inefficiencies and all.

Right now, on the big island of Hawaii, a robot is competing in a triathlon. The long-distance mechanical warrior is called Evolta; it's a 6.5-inch robot packing three rechargeable Panasonic AA batteries on its back. Guided by an infrared sensor that follows an LED its handlers string along in front, the three versions of Evolta—one each for swimming, riding, and running—will together try to finish a full Ironman triathlon.

The carbon-fiber and titanium Evoltas have a week to complete the course, running 24 hours a day and stopping only to recharge the batteries. (Human competitors complete the entire triathlon in a day, but give the robots a break—they're 6 inches tall.) These bots are equal parts cute-but-rugged machines; a swimming, riding, and running advertisement for Panasonic; and a curious experiment in building humanlike movement into a robot.

Each incarnation of Evolta is a one-off creation handmade by Tomotaka Takahashi. For the past 10 years, Takahashi, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, and his company Robo Garage have designed diminutive, humanlike machines that have drawn big oohs and ahhs from crowds at expos. Takahashi's creations look like oversize action figures, but they respond to voice commands and imitate human motion as much as possible. And if the robots all look like relatives of Astro Boy, that's on purpose. Takahashi draws his aesthetic from a childhood spent reading comics, he says.

"Takahashi-san is a very gifted robot designer who draws on Japanese anime for inspiration," says Tim Hornyak, who wrote about technology and Japanese culture in the book Loving the Machine: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots. "He has parlayed his passion for building robots at home into a marketing tool for major companies. While personal robots remain a future dream for the Japanese, their increasing use as marketing tools by major corporations reflects a belief that they can be viable partners, and even friends," Hornyak says.

The key to the humanness of Takahaski's robots lies in their wasted movements. He, or any other skilled robot builder, could easily design a machine to swim, bike, or run far more efficiently. But he wants his creations to be imperfect—like us. "Engineers usually design a machine as rationally as possible, but I try to add more wasted motion. It's irrational, but it looks more natural," Takahashi says. "So I try to add useless motions to each joint."

Evolta, the technological triathlete, is simpler than Takahashi's other creations—the bot's movements are more conservative and there's less wasted motion, simply because Takahashi needed to stretch the battery life to complete the race. But, perhaps in a nod of fairness to the human competitors, Evolta is built with inefficiencies like our own. The swimming Evolta, for instance, performs a front crawl suspended between two egg-shaped floaters. Paddling its arms alone would be the most efficient propulsion for its body shape, but the robot kicks its legs feebly—it looks more human that way.

The cycling Evolta is now riding a tricycle 112 miles along Hawaii's northwest coast, on a road that cuts through black lava fields, notoriously prone to gusty winds. It teeters from side to side the way human cyclists do, which is another built-in inefficiency. Similarly, the running Evolta that will complete the 26 miles of Ironman's marathon finale bobs up and down slightly and rocks its arms the way people do.

Cycling and running are both old hat to Evolta. In 2009 it rode a tricycle on the French 24 Hours of LeMans course, and last year it ran 310 miles along a historic highway between Kyoto and Tokyo. But this was the first time the robot swam in public. That part of the course had worried Takahashi more than the others. The difference, he says, is that in the water, the robot has to move without stopping—otherwise the current will set it back, or worse, carry it away. Also, saltwater is corrosive and the robot's ferrous bits rusted in its tests. Even with its carbon-fiber and plastic skin, waterproofing is tough.

But swimming Evolta survived the aquatic portion of the triathlon. And with its cycling counterpart well on its way, it looks like Takahashi has an excellent shot at seeing his miniature bots complete this difficult course. You can watch the robots in Hawaii now on Panasonic's live-stream video.